I have made no secret of the fact that I am uncomfortable in general with the word ki, because it has no agreed-upon definition and because my impression is that it is generally misused by those who are not fluent speakers of Japanese. But what I am uncomfortable with is neither here nor there; I'm sure there are those who use the word effectively. ...

And the scientific truth is that no such thing exists.

You should have seen the sort of desperate expression on the face of practically any Asian I have dared to ask how she/he would define KI, be she/he of Chinese, Japanese or any other Asian cultural heritage. More so, when they were well into scientific thinking.

They simply did not use Ki as a defined entity, they had to add at least one other meme to this quite undefined "nonsensical" part, a meme in itself, and only then in this combination it started to take on "definite meaning".

So, looking for definite meaning in Ki as a stand-alone term itself seems to be a typical crazy western people predilection.